Twenty minutes after last Friday’s naked poetry reading was slated to begin, the event’s emcee, Aurora Donovan Danai, walked onstage wearing a sweater and striped jeans. “It’s going to be a while before we start, because we’re like that,” she announced. “Everyone is encouraged to be naked. So you can get yourself ready for that. Or think about it. There are too many people here with their coats on.”
The Naked Poetry Anti-Slam, as this event was officially called, was Danai’s brainchild. “I wanted to organize this as a way to promote audience patience for people who want to share their poetry that might not otherwise be listened to because either they are quiet, too sensitive, or too silly,” she says. On the press releases and e-mail invites for the event Danai outlined the few rules: “No cameras / No gropers / No drunken pukers.”
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Danai is a poet and artist who paints what she calls “psychedelic art nouveau” murals for people’s homes (see www.muralivegot.com). The 25-year-old Joliet native first got naked in public six years ago, when she took a job as an artist’s model for a drawing class at Burkhart Studios, a coffeehouse and art gallery on Halsted.
Last year she published a book of poetry with four titles: Blowing Sunshine up Your Ass, Dick-Shaped Turd, “something about God, and I don’t remember the other name,” she says. “All of my books have several titles. I make different book covers for all of them, so it’s like TV Guide–it’s the same on the inside, but it looks like a different book.” She printed 100 copies, all of which she sold within two months. Her next book–which she can’t afford to publish yet–is called Love Notes to Warlords and Weapons of Mass Creation.
Then Danai slid her tutu off and read some of her own poetry, including a piece called “Sexuality Janitors.”
Danai, who claims she charmed her way out of an arrest last summer by visualizing the officers’ chakras, put on her sweater and pants before speaking to the cops.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Paul L. Merideth.
